


Swords of Mercy

by Prince_of_Leaves



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7684423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prince_of_Leaves/pseuds/Prince_of_Leaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brienne's taken a secret oath. She's promised to save Jaime from himself. She's trying not to regret it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jaime’s life is a river of wildfire. 

The world lies just beyond his golden grasp. It always has. It is merit and jargon, a cold unknown. He wonders what it’s truly made of, and if it will accept him. He wants to be worthy of it, to clasp it, to understand it, to be known. Perhaps he has no right to ask again, let the skies sneer at his twisted soul, strangle him with frozen rain. He wants to believe there’s a road to salvation, a traveler on a path criss-crossed with vines, knotting around the doorways with their tightly laced branches, like clasped fingers, the sense of mold and forgotten hope. 

He brushes his phantom thumb around the rim of worthiness and that makes it unsettlingly alive, all these feelings and thoughts and oaths, as real as his other limbs, like blood flowing smoothly through his dreams. The world will not pardon the words which he has spoken, which have cut and nicked and burnt and hurt others, words he will not take back.

These are the stars of his day. After all, sunlight is the most forceful.

At dusk, the shadows twist through him, laughing. They will not let him go, they cannot. His life has been monumental. It has shaped a century, a civilization. It has been harsh to him and he’s been cruel too. His innocence has been lost with the rubies, now a yarn, a tale, a mocking smirk, as if neither had ever existed.  
He cannot be forgiven. 

~~

Brienne’s life is a river of rocks.

The world has always been just the world to her, as open as a promise, as easy as knowing that the sea could never be conquered and a great swordsman had to have exemplary footwork and that she loved her father and hated liars. She knew she was too tall and too ugly. It was all so simply there. 

That’s why Jaime flummoxed her. He had to be sly and sarcastic, as if there was a need for it. As if he could not survive without always, always acting. There were rare moments when she saw Jaime for who he was, and when she did, she firmly decided that he was not as complicated as he thought himself to be. 

‘You’re the only one who actually cares about me,’ he remarks, through his teeth, and she cannot tell if he’s being sincere or it’s one of those constant casual japes. He knows she does not understand when he speaks in tongues, and yet he chooses to torment her so.

Perhaps she should smile at him like one of the pretty girls in taverns, skirts swishing around their legs, brushing against his boots, bringing out his wry amusement, with the absolute knowledge that he was in control and they could never have him. She knows that if she tried, she’d look ridiculous. 

‘You’re a good man,’ she replies, completely sincerely, because that’s all she’s ever been able to be.

Jaime snorts at this. She feels strangely sorry for him. It’s as if all he knows is deceit. Perhaps this is a challenge. Brienne has always liked challenges, to fix things that are so broken that everyone else has given up on them. Perhaps that’s why she’s so stubborn.

The fire whispers and whistles, she holds her hands above the flames, and the heat is drawn to her heart. Jaime’s eyes are wicked in the flames. The green is all dangerous predator, waiting for her to fall, to be caught, to lose this game. 

‘I helped you a few times,’ he shrugs, ‘it does not make me a saint.’

‘Jaime,’ she explains patiently, ‘no one else would have cared at all.’ Suddenly she feels extraordinarily grateful, because the people she’d met would've preferred her dead and even her father had wanted her to be gone, inevitably married to some creepy crone. She was always in the way, less than a human, more than an object, and honestly, it was not as if she’d been that eager to live either, not happily at least, and Jaime had saved her. He had saved her life. 

‘That was a debt paid,’ he mumbles. 

‘No,’ she spits viciously, flicking sand grains into the fire, because she hates that, the connotations behind it are terribly wrong, it makes her feel queasy when he mentions that phrase, as if life is more of a transaction than an emotion, and how can you live like that? 

‘Maybe,’ he’s looking at her, dissecting her existence. And she does not know what he’s trying to say. She’s never been smart at all of this, there’s generous and kind, selfish and horrid, and why does Jaime never say what he truly means? How is she supposed to know?

‘You’re lying’ she stares at him. He has to be. She feels the horror of her high opinions of him curdle slightly. Something is strangling her inside and she flinches back, afraid of crying. She feels so awfully young, as if this war has not happened at all and she’s back at Tarth, drawing spirals with her toes on the beach. 

The world blurs beautifully for a second. She’s drowned in tears that do not fall. She cannot survive this mockery of Jaime. She will not. She has to be right. He has to be good. She knows that.

‘I’m good at lying,’ he snarls at her, as if it’s her fault that he’d grown up in a court of snakes. He likes blaming her sometimes, for things that are out of her control, all kinds of metaphorical feelings that she doesn’t know how to balance, and she realizes that Jaime has always thought that it was the duty of others to listen to him.

Maybe royals are not meant to have humility within them.

Still, she is not one someone living off the scraps of Jaime’s arrogance. She’s Brienne of Tarth and he’ll treat her as such. 

‘You cannot lie through your actions,’ she says resolutely, because she’s surviving and that means fighting with every moment, trying to tell yourself you’ll absolutely live another day, when you know that the curse of a weapon cannot be unraveled, ‘no matter what you’re saying.’

Jaime looks at her for a long time. Her eyes are a theater and he watches his story in all its molten glory.

‘You’re naive,’ he finally says. It seems bitter and generous all at the same time. 

‘I’m a good person,’ she hiccups, trying so wonderfully to be brave. 

He smiles. It’s a sweet expression, and the anger in him settles, quietening the air, wind ripples on a still lake. Yet, she does not know how to react to it. 

After all, Jaime has a library of smiles.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaime’s nights are starless skies.

Many a year ago, Jaime fell asleep between two wounded soldiers. Their limbs wilted as their eyes begged for help. Blood dripped onto Jaime’s hair, cursing the gold evil. He was grateful it wasn't his own. He was bruised but not scratched. They would lose so he could win. He truly wanted to save them. He wanted to drag them out of hell. He was so tired though. He hadn't slept in days. He couldn't stand up now. He couldn't speak. He didn't know how he could still think. He needed a minute he knew they didn't have. And the man blew his last breath against Jaime’s cheek, so dreadfully icy.

He still remembers them. There’s a litany of men like these, seemingly a whisper out of reach while there’s truly acres between them. These tragedies have stolen away his sleep. He often wakes up gasping, smoke filling his lungs, fires circling him, closer and closer, and this time he rescues no one. 

Sometimes, he doesn't want to sleep. He’s desperate and he cannot go back to those nightmares, or rather, those memories. He needs one night in all his years, to be quiet, to be calm and to be safe. His skill has saved him from mortal men but these demons lie too far away. No matter coin or sword, they are determined to never leave him. 

Dreams were for children. They were falling asleep to colors which weren't red. They were imagination and happiness, to share with siblings. They were slightly embellished for better storytelling and became true companions. They were given without the taunt of debts.

He must've had them once, surely.

~~

Brienne’s nights are championed tourneys. 

So far beyond civilization, there are so many stars she feels she could drown in them. It’s as if the cities have waged war upon them too and they've been left to take refuge in the forests. She pulls her sleeves over her fingers, clutching at warmth. She’s almost asleep.

‘What do you dream about?’ Jaime’s obviously used to sleeping much later, because people at court stayed up well past twilight, prowling around the corridors with their candles. She’d told Jaime she ‘preferred elsewhere’ when he’d questioned her about the Red Keep’s generosity to its guests and he’d rolled his eyes. He probably knew she hated court.  
She blinks at him. The sleep falls off her eyelashes, like the last notes of a song. Jaime complains that she isn't in awe off his loveliness. It’s true, but she is aware of it.

‘I don’t understand you,’ she sighs, and tells him anyway.

It always begins with a sandstorm. She walks calmly through the dust and her armor glints terribly as she passes her enemies. Oathkeeper is bloodthirsty and brave at her side. Her helm shutters over her face with a clang. The men cackle as they approach her and she withstands their jeers without a spoken response while her sword slashes at them, their blood and pride flowing together into defeat. She is always victorious. 

He’s going to die, she thinks pleasantly, when he starts coughing.

It’s strange, how these good dreams haven’t melted away. She doesn't feel like a great knight, more like another victim of war, roaming around these twisted paths with no truth at the end of it all. Jaime likes reminding her of her inadequateness. ‘The Rainbow Guard,’ he’ll snigger ‘that is not what you call a legion of warriors. It’s a name for empty headed princesses.’ Jaime seems to think these snarky comments suit the muddy roads and mad outlaws. 

‘I’m an heiress,’ she responds, ‘and you’re the princess.’ It’s quite true, in fact. He’d fit right into that guard. He’s the vainest human she’s ever met. Sometimes he hides his hand because he does not want pity or attention and other times because it’s at odds with his beauty.

Jaime’s always sour for a few yards after that. He rides on ahead, muttering about ‘stupid ugly wenches’ and then gets inevitably bored, returning to her side. 

‘Did he give you a ribbon for your girly knighthood ceremony?’ He asks, with that infuriating teasing tone he keeps with him like an invisible shield. 

‘I don’t have the hair for it,’ she shrugs, ‘you do. You brush your hair thirteen times every morning.’

‘You’re staring,’ he says, all chuffed about existing.

‘I’m glaring’ she counters, because she really isn't as pleased about Jaime’s presence as he seems to think she is, ‘because you’re always late.’ He pouts like the spoilt prince that he is, riled by a giant girl who had her squire hack at her hair with a knife, as if her opinion matters any and it’s entirely amusing. 

‘You cannot be a knight to a dead pretender,’ he states randomly one day.

He doesn’t seem to understand that these comments do hurt her. She’d worked harder than any man to get a place in that guard. She had had to bear years of cruel torment from the very men she’d beat and still after that she’d endured their rancor. The knighthood had filled her with an overwhelming happiness, which nothing else had yet to come close to. 

‘If it means so much to you, then you can knight me,’ she replies. Surely there’s a purpose to all these insults. Unless he speaks purely for his own entertainment, which she should probably know by now. He’s quiet for a blessed while. Brienne thinks of wonderful things. Of course Jaime interrupts her.

‘If you mean it,’ he pauses, because he’s so used to being lied to, ‘I’d do it the way it’s supposed to be done. The guards would stand attendance. The king would honor you. Your crest would be hung up on the walls. You already have the sword.’

He’s not even smirking.

‘You’re the head of the Kingsguard,’ she responds, ‘and you’re here with me.’

He says not a word for many a mile and she thought she’d stopped caring a while ago, but it seems that Jaime continuously matters to her and she’s not sure if she likes that. 

~~

Tonight, the world is silver. His mirth has turned into embers. 

‘I do remember,’ he whispers, as if it’s a secret, when there’s naught but the stars eavesdropping ‘when you told me to knight you. You do not seem to understand that I’m unworthy of it. I dream but of horrors. A man with no honor could not knight an oathkeeper.’

‘Then I’ll knight you,’ she whispers back.

Jaime’s laughter is memorable.


	3. Chapter 3

Jaime’s journey is discovery. 

It all began on the King’s Road to Winterfell. He had travelled to a few regions and yet, as it got colder and quieter, he realised that he had not observed much of the wider world. He was not sure what the rules were regarding running of on a sabbatical away from the guard, it was that he had not even thought of sailing across the Narrow Seas or of visiting Dorne. Perhaps it was because he’d be recognised and they’d behead him. Then again, he’d had no curiosity to visit the Wall and it was manned by criminals. They would have no qualms welcoming him.

The North was wretched. The people were as stony as the statues in their crypts. It was freezing, in their mock summer nonetheless, that he had wished the entire land melted away and no one would have to hear of the Starks or their wolves ever again. The way home was miserable, fraught with troublesome foreigners and the jarring company of those he knew. He decided that exploration was useless. Home was safer, it was better to stay where the cyvasse figurines fit into their squares instead of being pushed all over the board, in places where they should not have even ventured toward.

At the entrance of the Red Keep there was an ornate cyvasse board on a table. Then, when he had no one to protect and it had been years since the last war, he’d sometimes play a game with one of the young guards. They were inexperienced and he always won. The power he possessed over it fascinated him. Later, it had been shoved off the table and the carefully carved pieces were crushed into his memory. They were scattered and smashed, a metaphor for the world around them.  
He wondered who’d thrown them. He wondered if he could measure his fault in this war.

The road is curled around his bones now. It slithers its punishment and favors through his trek, towards oaths slit through with lies and lessons like ivy, poison twisting through a conviction already supposed to be well settled on its careless insistence. It seemed there were questions hanging of branches and harsh comments snipping at his ankles. There was time to think and it had torn him away from the Jaime he’d lived with for so many years.

There are empty skies and sun seared trees. He hears the cackles of the dead reaching out to him, tormenting. There is so much quiet, it shares his saddle and indeed, it is a heavy companion. It makes him, unfortunately, introspective in a shallow way (he cannot bare intense seriousness). He supposes he’s always been confident. Now he realises that some of that is more likely impudence, masquerading fear and future, all what he hides from his family, all that he cannot face his own faults.

Sometimes, it’s better not to know.

~~

Brienne’s journey is adventure. 

She had left the Island with the ambitions of youth, bountiful with feverish dreams. They could be epic raids or a lending hand, they were all written in the ledger of her deeds. It was her intention to come across a meek maiden, cowering from the slurs of a brute and rescue her with a sweep of steel. Her stallion would happen upon a gathering of bedraggled workers, their master having refused to pay them their due, and she would hold her weapon at his throat and insist on justice. She might find a battle raged against tyranny and her sword would end all evils.

She would be like those magnificent warriors of old. As a child, she had read of their endeavors. Tales like spider webs, futures entwined together by the invisible wisps of historians’ imaginations. Perhaps those tales should be written truthfully. They should tell off failures so vast and leaden, they cast vistas of sorrow over decades. Brienne would have liked a warning of what was to come. Her first chapter as warrior would not begin by a random quest for being majestically helpful. Rather, it began in the heart of a war changing fates and kingdoms, cracking and crumbling the grounds beneath her feet. There had been no time to fight, to show prowess of footwork and nifty wrist cuts, no one to save so to be welcomed by the cheers of triumph, only to survive.

Surviving, she thought morosely, had no glory to it at all. Desperation that insisted on eating gory chunks of unknown origin or falling off the saddle in exhaustion, only to be entertained by a catalogue of bruises and the jeers of fellow riders, were scarcely mishaps that dared to be told. Yet, that’s what it mostly was, to be a warrior. She was a destitute soldier with neither retinue nor commission, trespassing on a pebbled path of oaths. It was a miserable occupation. Her dreams had indeed been narrowed and she morbidly illusion-ed that this road might never end and she would die on it, with Jaime the last person to have spoken to her. He was at her right, as he usually was, always slightly ahead or slightly behind, so their conversations were peculiar, as if the words had to be judged first. 

She glared at him.

It occurred to her that Jaime could be a warrior in a tale. The version would have to be somewhat censored and he would certainly need an alias, but he had some dramatic deeds which deserved to be applauded. He had already been adopted by the artistry motley though. There were ministrels singing their mockeries and plays of despicability. They had passed some of these fairs. The crowds laughed raucously and threw coins at their entertainers. Jaime seemed immune to it. He always insisted that nothing affected him. The words of the common could not harm him. He could, he’d sneer spectacularly, even though she had not asked, murder them all and then where would their foolhardiness be? 

Actually, he would be the storybook villain.

‘Brienne?’ the word tripped through the muggy air and onto her ‘is something the matter?’

She relented. He was a villain with vaguely favorable intentions. He also had hair that glittered. The sun tried fervently to shine brighter than it and had so far, not succeeded. It had to count for something.

‘I used to have a library in Tarth,’ she says, because that’s how life on the road is, you tend to tell fellow riders all these inconsequential memories of the past, which had not held much significance for you before ‘it was not substantial. I burnt all the books with the crying girls. Their cowardliness appalled me. They always stop their weeping when’

The arrow, she’s sure, has nicked her nape. It’s as thin as an icy snicker. 

Her limbs are ready to fight before she is. She dismounts the horse, the mud squelching beneath her boots. The archer is wary to come closer. Her horse crushes the mulch underfoot. Oathkeeper is cool and reassuring. She can hear the wind, brittle and slight, the notch of bow against string, and the trees as they lean forward, with shivering leaves. 

She sees the arrow on the ground and picks it up. The feathers have a wisp of blue in them, nestled in white and one tiny brown partridge feather, like an afterthought. These are Vale colors, a territory they have been walking for a while and a people who, although not known for discussion, are stalwart and intimidating. They are not supposed to be here and she needs the archer to understand that they mean peace. 

The next arrow reverberates off her armor. Still, she waits. The archer will be watching for a reaction and Brienne does not want to fight. It does not seem to be a hefty army hiding between these evergreens and she could very well kill the attacker. However, one missing person leads to questions they do not need. She does not want to be a knight masquerading as a murderer. She knew a few like that. They held desperation for cruelty and being called knights, they were lawfully lauded to do these nasty deeds.

She glanced quickly at Jaime. She had her doubts about his complicated character but she did not think he was one of those. Then again, she fretted that her view of Jaime was not strictly unbiased. Like was complicated like that. There were all these greys, where she once thought that the world and its wonderings were as clear as the sapphire seas.

‘Brienne!’ 

Jaime hisses and holds up an arrow, which has hurt naught but a lock of hair. She decides that the archer had had a considerable amount of time to consider the purpose of attack and so says, rather bravely, ‘show yourself!’

Jaime winces. 

She waits for a slew of arrows to end her young and eventful life, but instead, the archer appears. A scowling youth with his bow, clutched in slender hands. Brienne can tell that he has not seen war. Although it has come to all parts of the country, the Vale has not been much exposed, especially this high up.

‘We don’t want any trouble lad,’ Jaime says, in a tone that he thinks is reassuring, and is rather condescending ‘we’re passing through.’

‘This is my home,’ the boy sneers, ‘and I am protecting it. We of the Vale do not think much of Southerners’ or’ he raises an eyebrow at Brienne ‘wherever you’re from.’

‘The Island of Tarth’ Brienne informs him, as if it would mean anything to the archer.

The boy raises his eyebrows, ‘I studied geography you know. I know where Tarth is,’ Brienne is rather impressed. The Island is hardly a landmark and forgettable to the educated too, ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to shoot you if you don’t move off my land immediately.’

‘Ever killed anyone?’ Jaime rolls his words languidly, ‘I would not suggest it.’ Brienne has seen Jaime rile up the most casual of men because it amuses him. She does not want that to happen here. Reputation has a tendency to harm a traveler and they have enough of that as it is. 

‘We won’t bother you no longer, kind sir,’ Brienne tells him, giving him a smile, which does not, she knows, become her face easily enough ‘we will be on our peaceful way.’ She sheaths Oathkeeper and puts a foot in the stirrup, swinging a leg over the horse. 

‘My tutor is dead,’ the boy says, rather shyly, ‘could you come tell me about Tarth? There’s hay for the horses if you’d like and stew for you.’

‘Oh aye,’ Brienne clicks her tongue at the horse, ‘we’ll follow you.’

‘As for you,’ the boy glances at Jaime, considering if the invitation extends to him, and Brienne snorts, because Jaime obviously thought it did ‘well, I suppose there’s a bowl of broth for you.’

Jaime glares at him and then looks up at her, up and up and up. 

It’s response enough, as far as Brienne is concerned.

~~

Journeys, Jaime is recognizing, is of both places and people. It is the way the Vale Mountains rip through the clouds, like torn parchment. It is the geriatric at the tavern, who knows all the news, right from West till the East, although he has not left his corner for years. It is the youth on the high pass, an archer that will be a fabled one in a few years, tying feathers onto the ends of his arrows with warm patience. It is Jaime himself, who finds that being helpful is too about graciousness and not to be condemned with reluctance. It is watching Brienne, as he follows her on the King’s Road and onto the side paths, as she unknowingly teaches him of bravery and honor and that home might be a palace or an island or _extraordinary eyes_.


	4. Chapter 4

Jaime is all royalty.

It is in the way he moves, like a lackadaisical cat. His limbs follow their own accord, by the manner of his mood, by the pace at which he cares, deliberately obverse to any other. His speech is wanton, the words roll off his tongue, insult or not, they sound begrudging, as if one should be thankful for merely being addressed. He is superior to the common populace, taught this through his lineage, born with the heritage of bountiful gifts, power, intellect, wealth, pride and beauty. He has the careless innocence of someone who will never truly be left to the diseases that wreck humanity, always in the security of his name. He is oblivious to the emotions of those who are not family, sees them as pitiful, petty, like weeds that twist through rich gardens, disturbing and distasteful.

Then, there is the law. Jaime wants to write laws solely for his own self, that pardon him from misguided actions and let the future be free for days of wild, purposeless deeds, which could cause vicious slurs or carve a slight breath of joy. 

He has too, felt the wretchedness of being regal. It is constantly being watched, with stares that make him turn his collar up, a lifetime of wariness, of being held in a vague sense of murky contempt. The decisions he grasps at, because the reaction amuses, the defiance alleviates. All those expectations, as if he was created to be the marionette of his ancestors. The liars at the Red Keep, with their poisonous mysteries and venomous orders, the invisible veins of destruction that accrued through the walls and latched evilly onto all around it. It was as if he was leisurely, artfully, graciously, being strangled.

Everybody dies though. He supposes he should be grateful that his life was not entirely insufferable.

Jaime wonders about endings. He might have had almost everything but he is not quite sure what he wants now. He’ll take a hot meal, a good bath and his old hand. All these quests have to be fulfilled as soon as possible. Brienne could smile more. It does nothing extraordinary to her features but it does do something to his heart.

~~

Brienne is barely nobility.

She’s insistently not Jaime. She does not have the hauteur of a famous (or rather, notoriously infamous) bloodline, their limitless mines, fierce regard in court and certainly not any of those pretty looks. They are all a golden charade. 

The Isle of Tarth is strategically useful for battles, could be used by warring sides, but besides that, it does not herald much prominence in the kingdom. They could all drown and she doubts anyone would know. The old castle was beaten by the angry seas, the waves sipping away at the stones, the echoes of salty water rushing through her genes. It was comfortable, rather than luxurious. Jaime would laugh at it all.

That did not matter. She was not going to invite him. 

Then, there was question of her inheriting the title. Her father could sire a son and Brienne would be nothing more than a broken soldier. She’d have to become a sellsword. She closed her eyes, breathed in the fragility of life, the hopelessness of sorrow and the depth of the unknown. The stable was warmer than open nights on frigid roads and yet she shivered.

Jaime had insisted that they’d stay at an inn for the night. They’d taken a few routes to find the best one, coddled off the wicked roads in a nest of long forgotten summer foliage. He had tossed a gold coin at the owner. It irked Brienne. She’d had to accept that Jaime’s normal was intensely contrary to what she knew. And what she thought of as propriety or rather, a pale attempt at mere manners was not to be ever found.

He’d been miffed at her expression, curiously perceptive when he felt like it. 

‘I thought you were like me,’ his tone was twistingly condescending, ‘aren't you an heiress of some random rock in your worthless ocean? Surely, you don’t have to be so,’ he gestured at the others in the inn, a circle of morbidly bleak humans, ‘forgettable.’

‘I am not like you,’ she’d snapped, ‘I would never want to be like you. You are not special either. You are like all the other crudely entitled people I have confronted. I am neither rich nor royal, and I am grateful for it.’ She’d swallowed, unsettled, unused to so many words, at saying it to someone she hardly disliked.

‘If it were not for me,’ Jaime had spat back, his eyes treacherously marvelous, green as a solemn forest spring, so far hidden from war it was almost history, ‘you would be sleeping out with the horses. The ruffians would not ask you this time. You would not be able to contest.’

‘I’d have my sword,’ Brienne had stepped back, slightly stunned.

‘The sword I gave you. Do you think a monstrously tall child of some lowly giant would have set eyes on Valyrian steel without my munificence? You do not have the pedigree of any of the great houses’ thus you are not prestigious enough to wield it.’

Jaime reflexively tucked his hair behind his ears. It was at his shoulders now, and peculiarly yellow in all these mountains. It was as if they had been buried in white. She could not remember the last time she’d seen the sun. It was all rather unnerving. His voice vociferous, speech verbose, as if he had already thought of all this and had spared her from hearing it.

Brienne wanted to apologize. She also wanted to be firm. After all, Jaime had taught her how to shrug of insults like they were red ants, even though the bites stung, they did not truly harm. This was not like that though. It was not the jeer of a beggar, or the cackle of a highborn lady, it was Jaime. Yes, Jaime had insulted her many a time, but it was never this vitriolic.

Unless she’d let down her guard and he had always found her a fool. 

‘It is not about lineage, my lord. It is about following the honorable code of a knight. That has always been my intention and I have always tried to follow that,’ she sounded weak, a mimic.

‘I do not need your lectures, squire,’ it was harsh, offended and Brienne could not swallow, as of being called a replaceable lackey ‘I have seen more than you will you ever see. I might have been generous enough to let you on this journey with me, but do not be mistaken. I am head of the King’s Guard. You are young and ridiculous.’

‘Ser…’ she almost said Kingslayer. It was as if they’d just met and the chasm was full of hate.

‘You have broken oaths too, Tarth,’ it was cold and cruel, quick as a knife.

He was right. 

She took the sword from the scabbard and laid it on the table in front of him. Jaime reached out for it, hand curled around the hilt, the steel like black ice, shimmering with blood and magic. The cries of those dying wept out of it and the horror of it rang in her ears. She shook her head to rid it of the clamour, of her stormy heartbeat, and walked out. 

~~

The night is full of cracks, bewildered with nightmares. It is solemnly morbid and jarringly quiet. The land is bewildering and foreign without Jaime’s breathing, the lilt of it. She leads her horse out of the stables, onto to those lonely, rocky paths, framed with ridges and crevices. She rides cautiously, wary of the all the secrets that lie wait after a fall.

It is mid morning when she decides to rest. She did not much miss the city whilst she was in the company of another but now she yearns for the cacophony of it, least of all to mist her thoughts. 

There’s steel at her throat. Brienne imagines silver on her tongue. 

‘Wench.’

She cannot speak because Oathkeeper might slit her throat and there is nothing more disgraceful than being killed by one’s own sword. 

‘I did not mean all of that,’ he sighs. The tree, a hundred years old at least, magnificently gigantic, enough to hide a village, seems to understand her sorrow, she can feel its whispers, accept its wisdom.

‘Are you not going to reply? Am I to write poetry to you? I will inform you that I have never written an ode to any lady and you cannot, despite my sincerest admiration of your deadly talents, inspire me to any sort of eloquent expression.’

She cannot speak and he will not remove it.

‘I should not have taken your sword. I gave it to you in good faith and more, you had well earned it. I should think a Valyrian sword is worth much more than me.’

Brienne kicks him behind the knee and he splutters, falls back. 

‘I knew I missed you for some reason. It was for your gracefulness,’ he glares at her, ‘certainly not your conversation nor your scowls.’ 

She takes the sword and slides it back into place, right where it should always be. Then, she gives him a hand up. He mumbles, about how rude she is, that he is older than her, she should be honored that he left that wonderful inn to come and find her. 

‘You should never travel alone at night on roads like these,’ he scolds, ‘I do worry about you.’

He was not meant to say that out loud. Brienne wants to yell at him again. She’s a warrior, not a maiden. She has won many a battle without his presence. She is Brienne of Tarth.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

Jaime grins.


	5. Chapter 5

Jaime has decisively, defiantly, dangerously, desperately, sculpted his character.

It is a cloak of mockery and cruelty, a treacherous recklessness, a cool superiority, the sumptuousness of bravery, a casual front of amusement. These are the merits which he is known by, the traits that are legendry, spoken of in the practice yards, on river rafts, in the dance halls of castles, in the blue conclaves at the edges of the wall. He is, undoubtedly, the Kingslayer. 

These features all make him seem as he is incapable of emotions that are warm and welcoming, that are wonderful. They are the veils he uses to ignore his own hopelessness and misery, the restlessness that he feels, the white robe rippling with unhappiness. He has learnt that knights are all but exquisitely efficient murderers, bestowed with titles by corpulent kings. They are bereft of soul, limbs melted into armor, unworthy of empathy.

And Jaime, as if he is the most terrifying soldier of the era. Truly though, he is not. He remembers Aerys, his blood like a lake. It had reflected the king’s surprise, the suddenness of his death. Jaime had stepped in it as he walked up to the throne, with its ravenous knives and bewitching presence, and his shoes soaked it all in, the kingdom, the rebellion, the future. It was not a conscientious decision to take his place on that chair, drape his presence all over it, looking to all as the prince of the realm. 

They proclaimed their curse upon him, formed a new creature, an oathbreaker, the seal of his father’s sins. They forgot about Jaime though. They did not think of his experiences at court, the queen’s pleas, as if the air ached with it, the tortured wolves, their screams that cracked the world, the desperation of shattered, singed humans. Jaime had witnessed it all and it had slashed right through his innocence, snipped away at his soul.

There’s grief, honor and redemption. And Jaime’s wrapped up in all of it.

~~

Brienne is truthfulness, tenacity, talent, timidity. 

She is crushingly honest, the kind that is overwhelming, so that people will turn around at her comments and stare at her for a few seconds. She is wildly determined, incessantly insistent, marching, head held high, to her salvation. She has the fighting forte that would be honored by the original blade masters, the protectors of the realm, the makers of mythical swords, and they would be proud to call her their partner-in-arms. She is hushed instead of vibrant, a childhood unraveled by caustic words and never healing wounds. The years were barbed with lessons, and that has taught her to clad her spirit in iron, mournful of conversation, of breaking not because of blood, but rather of mockery.

Brienne is so very strong, and sometimes, rather sad. It troubles her sometimes, when the night is liquid wrath and she is smothered by the forest, the foliage that seems to grow in the dark, green and bloody, and she wishes, with all her sorrow, that it could be better. That’s why the mornings are always better, because there are distractions and those are great destroyers of regret. 

Nature has cleared for them an arena fringed with life and they are training for battles which they do not want to fight and for those that make their talent unfurl, their egos color like victorious flags, and you cannot have one without the other. Jaime has gotten rather good with his left hand. His delighted confidence is a new presence.

‘Come on Tarth,’ he calls, deceptively smiling, decidedly competitive.

Brienne lightly swings her sword, attempting to catch his shoulder and he steps neatly aside, now miffed.

‘I’m not a worthless cripple,’ he glowers, ‘do not fight me as if I am a squire.’ He still sounds the way he did when she first met him, the very best swordsman of the century, and woe to the one who thought otherwise. She watches him scowl and so she decides, she will fight that famous man. 

Brienne is swift, stalwart, superior. She lets him fight in return, blocking and parrying, waiting till he looks sure to best her, and then she slashes and hits and cuts and the sound of his beaten armor ricochets off the trees. 

Jaime stares at her, shaking. 

‘I never said you were worthless,’ she says, raises an eyebrow at him.

‘All of that,’ he attempts a step, thinks better of it and lies down, ‘is because I think I’m unworthy? Surely wench, surely there are better ways to make a man feel less lowly than attempted murder!’

‘If I wanted to kill you, I could have,’ she rolls her eyes, ‘do not be disheartened. Your skill is much improved.’ 

‘Oh no,’ he coughs, ‘that was the worst defeat of my career. If you were trying to make me leave the legends of a warrior, you might have succeeded.’

‘I was not,’ Brienne says, somewhat upset, ‘especially because you are a,’ she pauses, gulps, ‘well, a person who is not the enemy.’ 

Jaime narrows his eyes at her and then coughs. Brienne waits patiently for him to stop, and he refuses to, as if he’s doing it to irk her. 

‘Stop,’ she says uncertainly, peering down at him.

He continues coughing and now it sounds like he’s losing an argument with his lungs. He might choke himself to death and honestly, for all that they do not like each other, she does not want him dead. She sits down next to him, puts a hand on his nape and one on his back, and carefully helps him to sit up.

‘Jaime,’ she sighs.

‘I think I cracked a rib,’ he grips her arm, ‘you broke my bones.’ 

‘I’m sorry.’ She runs a hand through his hair, marveling at its softness on this rough road to salvation. She hopes that she has not crushed his spirit. Hearts are mysteries and sometimes, they shatter. That is not so easy to heal.

‘You could defeat those dragons,’ Jaime murmurs, and she realizes that he has stopped coughing. He hasn’t moved away though, the way she’d expected him to. She twists his locks between her fingers and distractedly decides to braid them.

‘I probably could,’ she shrugs, because there’s always a way to fight the beings that breathe, it’s those monsters that live within that she cannot be away it. 

‘And yet,’ Jaime looks up at her, and his eyes are a revelation of sincerity, something Brienne has never seen before, ‘you are the kindest person I’ve ever known.’

‘I’m sure I am,’ Brienne rolls her eyes ‘after all, the people you once knew are more likely to murder than have mercy.’

Jaime lets the words entwine around him, enthralled that she does not think of him as one of those anymore. 

‘Scoff you might and yet you blush,’ he says, and watches as she turns red and pink and just before sunset. 

‘Are you ever lonely?’ Brienne whispers. 

‘Not at the moment, no.’ 

They are homeless and at home.


	6. Chapter 6

Jaime loves fighting.

He loves it brilliantly and beautifully. The sword, sworn an oath only to him. The way the grips feels in his hands, molded to his palms, as if it has become a limb so part of him, its blood runs all the way to his heart. The cross-guard, restless fingers tracing the engravings, memorizing them. The blade as straight edged as wickedness, glorious with power, the constant promise of a glimmering future. Fighting is life and death, and all that is between. A sword writes history in blood, on the pages of tomorrow and yesterday, on those left waiting. 

He admires the swiftness of a great fighter. It has always attracted him. A fighter so fluid, you can barely see him, a spiral of limbs and metal, of conquest. As a boy, he’d watch the knights. He’d stare at their footwork and their swords swung as if they were birds of prey. They made it a spectacle of magnificence. Then he was a knight too, one for the ages, one to admire. Jaime was certainly the most prolific of his time. He’s still legendary. 

Jaime has never been particularly fond of reading, words seemingly so lifeless, so very slow, scrawled droplets of ink on curling parchment. Fighting is only the moment, two swords as they draw energy, lightening sparks as they meet. It is the smash of weapon against weapon, the clamor of it crowding the air, changing the way it tastes, as if there is a whole new earth born. It is parrying forward and stepping back, a mirror motion with the enemy, greedily trying to best him, waiting for a mishap, a gasp, a countable pause. 

Time becomes those you’ve left behind and those you've yet to meet. It is measured by blood, on the grounds, on the horses, on expressions. It’s when there is enough of it to say that the land belongs to the new dynasty, is when it will all stop. Then the day slips back into the world and the injured limp back to their camps.

Jaime knows that even the best suit of armor cannot protect you from those furious hammerings. He knows of bruises that color the skin into submission, as black as the hour before dawn. There is only one cure, and that is sleep. And milk of the poppy to subdue the agony.

A good sword, Jaime knows without a doubt, is loyal. It’s a lot more than he can say for the people he knows. People are all mostly worrisome and you’re never sure what they’re going to do next and mostly, how decisively they’re going to betray you. 

Sometimes, he closes his eyes and remembers the tourneys. He hears the praises of the other knights and the cheers of those in the stands. They had all spoken of him. Euphoria had flowed through every single inch of his existence, as if it the sun rose solely for him. 

He’d always been told that he was born to be a swordsman. It had to be enough. 

Or it certainly was, before they stole his hand.

~~

Brienne loves fighting.

She loves it tempestuously, tremendously, thankfully. It has brought her from sorrowful girl into a magnificent warrior. It has taken her over roads and across rivers, to sea shores and by castle walls. It gave her honor and eminence, to share hearth with queens and princes. It has bestowed her with safety and peace, become her only family. Fighting has given her a life and she has given hers to it in return. 

It seems that fighting comes from deep below the earth, somewhere pure and powerful. It consumes her, becomes her, until she is naught but a weapon and a purpose, and Brienne understands this most fervently. She accepts all of it, the consequences of a won war, warm blood spilling over her hands, unsettling against the frozenness of the enemy’s skin. The tormented echoes of cracking bones and battle calls. The agony of someone you know collapsing right in front of you. 

Brienne has seen it happen. It is enough to still the opponent, as if time has strangled him for the longest moment in his life. The grief is so unimaginable and yet so tangible, that something deep in you splinters. The infuriating concept of fighting is that it is always paired with pain. So, very early on she had realized that fighting haunts you, quells your sleep, and this too she accepts, without the slightest complaint. 

The Long Night looms over them with its dark claws, ready to ensnare them, to imprison them in hours of crushing blackness. They are well into the North now, and skirmishes have become a fair occurrence, leading mostly to a detrimental end. Then she quietly starts a fire and cleans her sword with snow.

‘Do you ever feel any emotion?’ Jaime stares at her. Really, before she knew Jaime better, she thought he would be flippant about everything, but it turns out he has feelings. 

Brienne shrugs. She looks at the bodies, and that’s all they are now, about to become nameless blocks of ice. She’s a knight, not a maester. She has to survive and that means being realistic, not dwelling on useless thoughts.

‘I am a fighter,’ she states, because that’s all there is to it.

‘So am I,’ he rolls his eyes, ‘but that does not mean I’m dead inside.’

‘You’re weak,’ Brienne says fearlessly, because winter is yet another game and there is no place for those who falter, with sword or word.

‘You’re weird,’ Jaime shivers, looking absolutely miserable. Brienne worries that he’s going die in all this snow. He’s a southern boy, really. His hatred of winter accompanies his fierce dislike of Ned Stark. There are new kings now though and Jaime must adapt. 

‘Do you want to turn back?’ She will certainly not accompany him. Although winter intimidates her, because of all the practical reasons, she’s not going to run from it. It’s part of the fight, after all.

‘And go where?’ he replies bitterly, ‘and go how? I’m doomed to die in this accursed state. I might as well perish tonight, because I cannot seem to get warm.’ 

‘You need to fight more.’

‘Is that your answer for everything? Do you have no other thought besides fighting? You are most uneducated, I must say. It is as if no one taught you more than duty and swords.’ 

’At the end, that is all you need to know,’ she answers firmly. She highly doubts anything else will save her during these wicked years. Jaime’s eyes are closed and his eyelashes are crusty with ice. Hesitantly, she walks over to him and shakes his shoulders. She did not realize how cold he was. He’s going to be as frozen as the dead.

‘Wake up,’ her voice is unsettlingly unsteady, because people die like this. You could be watching them and you would hardly know. Once, her tutor had taught her other techniques of staying alive. She supposes, quite distressfully, that she has to try one of them. This is more frightening than fighting. Carefully, she puts her arm around Jaime’s shoulders and hopes somehow that it will warm him up.

Brienne has decidedly accepted all the relentless effects of war but she did not expect to accept Jaime sleeping on her shoulder. At least he's breathing, she thinks, and although that should appease her concern, she cannot sleep. 

~

‘Thank you,’ Jaime says sweetly.

Brienne shrugs. He doesn’t have to say thank you, fighters look out for each other like that. It’s not like he’s special. 

‘Maid of Tarth,’ his voice is measured and serious, ‘you’re not only a sword hand.’

‘Youngest member of the Kingsguard,’ she responds, ‘neither are you.’

Jaime laughs and Brienne wants to keep it in her sleeve. 

‘You’re the only one who compliments me,’ he tells her, ‘the last time I was sincerely complimented I was probably fifteen years old.’

‘My pleasure,’ Brienne mumbles. 

‘We’re going North then,’ and the sky, the earth, the trees, are all everlastingly white, as if they have stolen him and he’s got no other choice.

‘We’re going to fight,’ Brienne says, her hair almost as silver as winter, falls across her forehead. She used to shove it away before, as if it was purposely offending her. Winter suits her, he thinks.

Jaime supposes he loves other things too, like his family. Perhaps he has to say that with a certain caution, because he’s not sure if that’s love, or an eerie synthesis of affection, aggression and abandonment. He loves his horses. He’s always had exquisite horses, easily some of the most renowned in all the kingdoms. Of course, he loves summer. 

‘Your eyes,’ Jaime’s words are so sudden, they freeze midair ‘are lovely.’

‘So are yours,’ Brienne states, as if it’s the most factual thing ever.

Jaime really wants to laugh. She's a pretty nice warrior, actually. He'll never tell her though.

Brienne loves her home. She loves the sea. She loves kindness.

It might not all be about fighting. It might be about the cold, the way it threads into your bones, and never lets you be. It’s about fulfilling promises and saving the world. It could be about the Kingslayer who sleeps on her shoulder, and breathes infinitesimally lightly, so that she has to keep checking if he’s alive. 

‘Wench,’ he’ll murmur, absolutely fast asleep, and Brienne feels, for some unfathomable reason, as if she’s been nicked with happiness.


End file.
